Economy

Canada’s banks weathered the financial crisis of 2008 better than many of their international peers which required expensive taxpayer-funded bailouts to stay afloat. Since the crisis, governments and regulators around the world have been laying the groundwork for bail-ins. In some of these scenarios, creditors holding instruments such as a new breed of convertible bonds bear at least some of the burden of stabilizing a bank in crisis.

A gas concentration detector told them the two coated tiles removed 88 percent and 97 percent of nitrogen oxides introduced into the chamber. Since the two tiles removed similarly high numbers of pollutant and one of the tiles was coated with 12 times the amount of titanium dioxide, the student researchers found that the amount of surface area coated in the catalyst was more important than the amount of catalyst that coats each unit of area.

Car sharing began about a decade ago in Boston. At the time, it was just a few people making themselves and their cars available to people without cars. Link-ups were done by cell phone. The practice has grown exponentially since then. New car sales are down because many people, especially those living in urban areas, can easily share a ride inexpensively and shed the responsibilities of car ownership.

The green highlights on the chart show the other times that both indicators were as extreme as they are now at the same time. All three led to at least a short-term bump in silver, but only the occurrence in 1997 led to a lasting rally of at least several months. In 2000, silver just kept dripping lower until finally the selling pressure abated and it ignited the massive bull market. In June 2013, the extremes saw silver climb more than 25% over the next couple of months, but obviously that rally failed.

The yellow brick road is the gold standard. The gold standard was blamed for the rise in prices and many believed the end of the gold standard would fix everything. But the citizens of the East (who are represented by the munchkins) wanted to keep the gold standard in place. They urge Dorothy to "follow the yellow brick road".

In the briefing, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan said tough standards are needed. When states have reduced their standards it’s “bad for kids, it’s bad for the country, it’s terrible for education,” he said. He also said Oklahoma is among the states that need to do a better job of educating its young people.

When regional water agencies first considered a Bay Area desalination plant more than a decade ago, they briefly considered making it more than double the size of the plant currently under construction in San Diego County. Since then, the idea for the Bay Area plant has been scaled back to about 10 percent of the original size based on the maximum intake capacity of the local water district. A tentative location has also been chosen: Mallard Slough, near where the Sacramento River meets the Bay. The plant is now on indefinite hold pending local demand, though studies have proven it’s technically feasible.

...the LNG economics are marginal. LNG is about long-term, steady supply. It’s a low-margin, long-term supply of gas to Europe. This is not a play for impatient investors who are looking to get rich quickly. This is a play for investors with longer-term vision, patience and strategic capabilities on a regional level. Those are the people who are going to make money off of this and, along the way, help reshape the balance in Europe away from Russia.

Gold & Silver

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Glazyev's [a Russian advisor to Putin] set of countermeasures specifically targets the core strength of the US war machine, i.e. the Fed's printing press. Putin's advisor proposes the creation of a "broad anti-dollar alliance" of countries willing and able to drop the dollar from their international trade. Members of the alliance would also refrain from keeping the currency reserves in dollar-denominated instruments. Glazyev advocates treating positions in dollar-denominated instruments like holdings of junk securities and believes that regulators should require full collateralization of such holdings. An anti-dollar coalition would be the first step for the creation of an anti-war coalition that can help stop the US' aggression.

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I love the ideals upon which the USA was founded. The moral developmental level and the systems-thinking reflected in the writings of the founders was inspirational.

This is why it is so painful for me to see this country plundering and raiding other nations just like the Vikings did a 1000 years ago. The moral developmental level of killing and plundering is one of millennia past, and is not appropriate for today.

It makes sense to me that the rest of the world wants a non-dollar based currency, to get out from beneath IMF debt, and a private communication networks. I do too.